Tumour cell border is most dangerous
11 January 2006
by Richard
Conan-Davies
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Tumour cells bordering normal tissue receive signals that tell them to wander away from the tumour, allowing the cancer cells to establish deadly metastatic tumours elsewhere in the body according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This thin, single-cell boundary where a tumour meets normal tissue is the most dangerous part of a cancer. "We found that the tumour cells in direct contact with normal cells had a different behavior than cells further inside the tumour," explains lead author Dr. Marcos Vidal "They were exclusively the ones that tended to leave the tissue." The research team created tumours in fruit fly eyes and wings that permitted them to study the behavior of individual tumour cells. The tumours were generated by turning off an inhibitor of a major oncogene called Src. The study showed that boundary tumour cells were tended to lose surface proteins that attach them to other cells and stabilize their position within tissues. The tumour's environment shows how important it is for how the metastatic process occurs and might be stopped. |
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